


astral navigation

by volantium



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Fluff, Getting Together, Harley Keener-centric, Idiots in Love, M/M, Oblivious Harley, this ended up way more angsty than i expected but it's me writing harley are we surprised? no
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-18 01:48:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29726475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/volantium/pseuds/volantium
Summary: Harley doesn’t want a soulmate. Harley doesn’tneeda soulmate.But then he moves to New York, and the compass on his wrist spins as wildly as he’s always heard, when in close proximity to your soulmate.He doesn’t notice it point true north the day he meets Peter.
Relationships: Harley Keener/Peter Parker
Comments: 16
Kudos: 219





	astral navigation

_You are my true north;  
no compass would point me in any other direction  
but you. _

—Kristen Hope Mazzola

Harley doesn’t want a soulmate. Harley doesn’t _need_ a soulmate.

But then he moves to New York, and the compass on his wrist spins as wildly as he’s always heard, when in close proximity to your soulmate.

He doesn’t notice it point true north the day he meets Peter.

That’s because he doesn’t know it’s actually Peter, then. _That’s_ because he’s too busy being shellshocked by the fact that Spider-Man has just swung his way into Tony’s personal lab, nearly ninety floors above ground level.

“You’re not Mister Stark,” is the first thing _Spider-Man_ says to him.

“You call him Mister Stark?” Harley can’t help but say, because that’s hilarious.

Even through the mask the look he gets is sceptical. “Yes? I’m just being polite?”

Harley’s seconds off saying _Tony wouldn’t know politeness if it bit him in the ass_ when the man himself walks into the room.

Tony takes one look between them, eyebrow raised, before turning towards Spider-Man. “FRIDAY said you were injured?”

It’s then that Harley notices the blood slowly dripping on the floor, and reaches out his right arm to steady the superhero.

In the ensuring mania, Harley doesn’t glance down to his wrist, exposed, where his compass has stopped its wild spinning. Doesn’t notice the flash of heat that sparks through his veins, either, the accompanying feeling his mom always told him about. He definitely doesn’t notice the way Spider-Man is staring at him, white eyes comically wide and latched to Harley’s compass.

The compass that Harley’s spent the better part of twenty years ignoring, ever since his dad walked out on them when he hadn’t even hit double-digits yet. His dad, who walked out on _his soulmate._ It rocked Rose Hill, that did, that transgression. Because it was one thing, to grow up and have your compass point towards whichever cardinal direction your soulmate was in, another to have it spin with magnetic confusion when you _finally_ near them, and yet again another thing entirely to walk away from the person who made your compass itself spin and point true north in their direction.

Harley’s seen what soulmates do to each other. He’s _living proof._ So, he doesn’t pay a single mind to the compass tattooed on his wrist. The one that always pointed north-east when he was still in Tennessee. The one that started to spin madly once he stepped off that private jet and onto the roof of Stark Tower. 

The one that’s stopped. The one pointing towards Spider-Man. 

* * *

Harley wakes up in the middle of the night, and realises something is _off._ Something off in a deeply profound, fundamental kind of way.

It takes him a moment.

Tony had insisted on him staying in the Tower; it’s taken nearly a week for him to settle in, so he knows whatever’s woken him isn’t that. He tosses, turns. Gets out of bed, and through the dark of his room, makes it into the bathroom.

He reaches out with his right hand to flick the light switch on, and in the bright flare of the fluorescent light, he sees it, reflected across the room in the mirror.

His compass has stopped spinning.

_His compass has stopped spinning._ Harley forgets to breath.

The evidence is there—plain as anything, in neat black lines, needle pointing true north. It’s been so long since Harley’s really _looked_ at it.

Harley had made a point, when he swore off the idea of soulmates all those years ago, to not cover up his compass like some people did. It’s considered sacrilege to tattoo over it—to hide it at all, really. Harley knows a few people in Rose Hill who keep theirs concealed, whether by a tattoo or not, people who’ve lost their soulmates. It makes sense. More people should understand that. But Harley’s really an outlier—he doesn’t cover up his compass despite not believing in soulmates.

He doesn’t cover it up as a reminder. That he’s fine— _more than enough_ —without living his entire life to the pull of his soulmate. He’s never going to be one of those people who spend years travelling the globe in search. He’s never going to go out of his way, to walk a certain north-east direction, just in case. He doesn’t want a soulmate. He’s better off without one.

And Harley _knows_ , even if he did meet them, he still wouldn’t need them.

Of course, that being said, Harley had noticed when the needle started spinning. He just hadn’t seen it stop. That makes a world of difference.

It’s the not knowing _when_ that causes sudden anxiety to pool in his stomach. Because It’s really only been two weeks since Harley got here, and, well, he’s met more people than he can count. Tower staff, Stark Industries staff, the Avengers, _Spider-Man,_ the bodega owner down the block, that one admission’s worker he spoke to at NYU. The list is endless. Any one of them could be his soulmate.

Harley takes a breath. Moves towards the sink and splashes his face with water.

Reminds himself that he knows that soulmates aren’t good for each other, has seen that with his own two eyes, has watched his mother whither since his dad left. Reminds himself that he’s never, not ever, wanted to meet his soulmate.

He leaves the bathroom light on when he goes back to bed.

Harley doesn’t acknowledge how difficult it is getting back to sleep after that.

* * *

The next morning, after his world-altering realisation, Tony summons him up to his lab again. When Harley gets there, Tony isn’t alone.

Harley doesn’t know it then, but this is another world-altering moment.

Across from him at the work bench is a boy around Harley’s age—boy is an inaccurate word, in so much that Harley’s on the cusp on twenty-two and a whole _adult_ now—with curly brown hair and eyes the same colour as the caramel Momma makes.

“Harls,” Tony says, beckoning him into the room. “This is Peter, my personal intern.”

As much as the concept of Tony having a personal intern baffles him, his Momma didn’t raise him to be impolite. Harley makes his way across the floor, and holds out a hand. “Harley Keener, pleasure to meet you.”

“Peter Parker,” he says, and gives Harley a strong handshake. “How do you know Tony?”

Harley smirks. “I saved his life, actually.”

“You didn’t,” Tony cuts in. “I saved _yours,_ if anything.”

Harley doesn’t bother to hold in his laugh.

Peter looks between them. “How?”

“By my presence, of course." Tony says. 

Peter laughs along with Harley at that.

“I still fixed the suit though,” Harley shoots back, just to be contrary.

“I know, I know,” Tony rolls his eyes. “You never let me forget it.”

Peter sits up straight, and looks at Harley with sparkling, toffee eyes. “You fixed the Iron Man suit?”

“Yep,” Harley says, just a little obnoxiously, popping the _p._

“Harley came up with those retro-reflective panels, too, you know the ones, Pete?”

“That’s so cool, dude!”

Harley smiles. “Thanks.”

“Peter, on the other hand,” Tony says, and Harley knows that look, the one that Tony gets when he’s about to brag. “Actually, kid, why don’t you show him?”

That leads to an afternoon of Harley, Peter, and Tony working on Avenger’s tech together, once Peter pulls out what’s apparently Spider-Man’s own webshooters, and Harley notices an irregularity in the code floating above the table. It's been a long time since Harley was able to just to let go, relax, with a soldering iron and good company. 

Later, after Peter leaves, and Tony and he are on their way back up to the private floors, Tony turns to him. “I think you and Peter will get along well.”

“Yeah,” Harley agrees, not knowing what he’s in for. “He seems cool.”

* * *

Weeks, months pass, and Harley settles into life in New York with only a few bumps along the road.

He’d moved under the guise of attending MIT, not so subtly encouraged by Tony. Harley didn’t want the charity. He knew if he so much as even breathed in their direction, they’d accept any kind of enrolment application simply by virtue of his association with Stark Industries. It sucks, really, cause once upon a time, Harley _had_ wanted to go to MIT for their engineering program. But the more he thinks about the more he baulks at the kind of pressure that would bring, the kind of privilege that Harley is wholly undeserving of, of what it would mean stepping into the limelight as what he knows the media would wrongly interpret as Tony's heir. He's already been pictured out at dinner once with him and Pepper, and even _that_ was exhausting. 

He’s just a kid from Tennessee. He’s nothing special.

So, one afternoon he sits down with Tony and Pepper, and tells them of his idea. To apply for a normal, entry level internship with Stark Industries, without their interference. Apply to NYU and chip away at his degree while earning some money to send back home to Momma and Abby. He didn’t think they’d disagree, but there’s a certain sense of relief that hits when Tony doesn’t argue, or Pepper doesn’t shake her head in disappointment.

As it happens, with Harley’s snazzy, regular intern job, his lunchbreak coincides with Peter’s. Soon into Harley’s employment, they strike up a habit of spending the hour together, and in between Harley’s burrito bowl and Peter’s Vietnamese noodles, he learns all the basics of Peter Parker. That he’s born and bred Queens, raised by his aunt and uncle after his parents passed away, of his uncle’s murder. How Peter, who Harley already knows from their months of acquaintance, who is so kind and caring, doesn’t deserve any of that. The world is a cruel place. He learns that Peter is already attending NYU, has been working for Tony since high school, where he met his best friends Ned and MJ.

That shocks Harley, because he remembers a Tony who was reluctant and downright rude to him way back when he crash-landed in Rose Hill. Hell, even back then, Harley still had to _prove_ himself to Tony, and Harley had been _twelve._ So, Harley’s suitably impressed that Peter managed to wrangle an internship out of him at fifteen. He says as much, one Tuesday lunch hour.

“Guess we all can’t be Peter Parker’s, huh, darlin'?” Harley had laughed.

Peter had looked at him across the cafeteria table, the tone of his voice unreadable. “And we all can’t be Harley Keener’s, either.”

“I’m not much,” Harley said, bashful in the face of Peter’s certainty, hand running through his blonde shaggy hair.

Peter, with that quiet, distilled air about him, hadn’t said anything.

Harley comes back to that moment every now and then. Whenever he thinks about Peter. They’ve become fast friends, as Tony predicted, but there’s just _something_ about Peter that draws him in. A mutual understanding, unspoken and ethereal. Every time they’ve ended up in Tony’s lab together, after hours, Harley’s come to realise he’s met his match. It’s in the way Peter’s just as smart as he is, can spit ball ideas back and forth for hours without getting sick of each other. It’s in the way Peter’s got the same passion and love for engineering that Harley does. It’s in the way that Peter and he are so eerily similar, and entirely opposite at the same time. In the way it's just _easy_ being friends. 

He knows, if his Momma were here, she’d take one look at them and say they get along like a house on fire. 

And, really, that’s always the beginning of the end.

* * *

One Saturday finds Harley waiting in Central Park for Peter.

It’s not the first time they’ve spent time together outside of the office, so to speak, but it’s not like they really work with each other either. This time it’s deliberate, planned, and Harley’s not quite sure what to make of it.

But that’s not a train of thought Harley wants to follow. At least, not yet.

What he isn’t expecting, is a Peter who turns up looking more frazzled than Harley’s ever seen him.

“Whoa, whoa,” he says when Peter comes barrelling up to him. “Who died?”

“No one,” Peter replies, and his voice is more serious than Harley was expecting. “Yet.”

That brings him up short. “Darlin’, what’s going on?”

Peter starts tugging at Harley’s sleeve, drawing him away from the crowded part and across the street until they’re hidden in an alleyway. 

“I have to tell you something.”

“Peter, you’re starting to freak me out.”

He watches Peter take a visible, heaving breath. “I’m Spider-Man.”

Harley blinks at him.

“I’m Spider-Man,” Peter repeats, this time flashing his wrist at Harley, and Harley sees the nanotech that Peter’s always working on in the lab fit snug around it, the edge of a stilled compass peeking out from underneath.

So, Peter’s met his soulmate. Huh.

So, Peter happens to be Spider-Man. _Huh._

Harley has to wonder how he didn’t realise before. He knows he can be kind of oblivious about people—he’s always been a _numbers are closest to the handwriting of God_ person, found solace in code and computers all through school, didn't have many friends. Kept his head down a lot. But still. Missing that his closest friend in New York is also a superhero? That’s something else.

“Harley?”

Harley shakes his head. “You’re Spider-Man?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Peter replies, stressed, head turning towards a distant point over Harley’s shoulder. “You need to get out of here.”

“What?”

“I have enhanced senses, I’ll be fine. You need to _go_.”

“ _Peter_ —"

“Harley, just trust me, go!”

“Darlin’ I do,” Harley says, stepping in front of Peter to catch his eye. “What’s going on?”

“Someone has a gun—”

“A _gun?_ ”

Peter starts pushing past him, the Spider suit already forming. “I have to go.”

“I’ll go with you,” Harley urges, grabbing Peter’s wrist, unintentionally pressing his finger against that edge of that dark compass.

Peter stills, and Harley, in the overwhelming awareness of _someone has a gun_ and the knowledge that Peter is Spider-Man, thinks it’s because of whatever his senses are picking up, and not because he's just touched his soulmate's mark. 

“Harley,” Peter says, and shakes Harley’s hand free. “I can’t lose you, too,”

Oh.

What does _that_ mean? 

Harley doesn’t have time to reply to that before Peter webs away, in the direction of where they were meant to meet. 

* * *

That night, Harley can’t sleep, and watches his compass point true north towards his soulmate in the shimmer of the city lights. 

* * *

Harley’s already out on the roof of the Tower when Peter finds him.

He isn’t surprised, after all. Peter’s just come back from patrol, and Harley may or may not have deliberately sat out here in the hopes of running into him, however slim a chance it is that Peter stops by the Tower after dark. 

Harley’s been feeling off all day. Can’t put his finger on it. Something intangible. Maybe it’s the fact he’s been feeling kind of homesick lately, with Abby’s birthday coming up and all. Maybe it’s the fact that he’s still processing what happened in Central Park. Maybe it’s the fact that between work and studying Harley’s suddenly feeling like he’s drowning, like he should’ve had this all figured out before he turned twenty-two.

Peter doesn’t seem surprised to find him up here. Harley supposes he wouldn’t, not with his enhanced senses. He probably knew Harley was up here before he’d hit the block.

“Harley?” Peter says, and Harley can hear the unasked _why are you up here?_

Harley doesn’t have an answer for that.

“I used to be a space kid, you know, growin’ up,” Harley says, instead, eyes trained up at the sky. “I really wanted to be an astronaut.”

Peter settles beside him against the wall. “I wanted to be a police officer like Ben.”

“I know it’s not my place to say, but he would’ve been proud of you, Peter.”

“I know,” is Peter’s soft reply. “You okay?”

Harley doesn’t have an answer for that, either.

“You can’t see the stars here like you can back home," he says, just as softly, like it's a secret. 

“Oh?”

Peter shifts towards him, pressed shoulder to hip to thigh against Harley. Like he knows Harley needs an anchor.

Harley makes a sound in the back of his throat, doesn’t admit that even thinking about the sky outside his window back in Tennessee makes him homesick something awful, more so than he already was.

“Momma always told me and Abby, that’s my sister,” he explains, at Peter’s quizzical look. “She told us that our soulmates are embodiments of Polaris, the north star, and that’s why our compass points towards our soulmates. Like astral navigation.”

“That’s beautiful,” Peter says, and from his tone of voice—something reverential, misplaced—Harley knows he means it.

Harley takes a breath, hates himself just a little for the fact that he’s about to shatter whatever picture of Peter’s conjured up about soulmates. But Peter’s told him so much about his life, his past, and Harley feels like he’s said nothing at all in return. 

Harley turns towards him, but Peter’s looking out at the sky now, his face quiet and serene and a kind of peaceful Harley doesn’t think he often gets. Harley can't look away.

“Maybe,” he says, voice quiet. “Once.”

“What do you mean?”

“My parents were soulmates.”

“Oh!” Peter’s voice isn’t doing what he expected—it’s not matching Harley’s somber mood, but instead is his usual sunshine disposition. “So were May and Ben!”

Ah, that makes sense.

Before Harley can say anything, Peter continues. “Soulmates make me believe in love, you know?”

Harley had been watching Peter, watching the New York skyline. The city lights reflected in those brown eyes. Nothing compared the open Tennessee sky, with its endless and bright stars. A need to see Peter under those same stars sweeps through him with such ferocity that Harley feels breathless.

He has to look away.

It’s painful. Imagining what could have been. Knowing that other people had that, could watch that kind of love flourish. Bloom. That soulmates are _real._

But Harley knows the truth.

Harley, looking out at the city, says, “My father walked out on us when I was seven. I don’t believe in soulmates.”

Soulmates aren’t real. That’s the truth.

“I’m sorry, Harls.”

He knows Peter doesn’t mean it in that fake-sympathy kind of way that everyone else has said, knows it comes from a place of understanding, but Harley can’t help but chafe a bit. He doesn’t like talking about it, doesn’t like using his father as the excuse for why he doesn’t buy into the soulmate bullshit, because there’s so much more to it, _but_ at the core of it, that’s the truth. Out of anybody, Peter would understand.

Peter understands _him._

“Nothing to apologise for, darlin’,” Harley still says, and shifts just that little bit closer to Peter’s warmth.

There’s a moment—in between Harley wondering when he got so _soft_ , and Peter turning away from the sky towards him—where the entire world goes quiet.

Harley can’t place it, but something happens in that moment.

Something between them changes.

* * *

After that night on the roof, he and Peter start spending more time outside of their lunch breaks together.

Time passes. It’ll be a year since Harley moved to New York in a few weeks.

They grow closer, in a way that has Harley kind of hesitant. Peter’s already met his soulmate. Even though Harley doesn’t believe in them, or knows that not all soulmates are romantic, he doesn’t want to keep Peter from that. Because from their one conversation, that stary night on the rooftop, Harley knows that Peter loves _love,_ probably loves his soulmate before he'd even met them. Even though it hurts a little, that Peter hasn't introduced them, Harley's sure he's got his reasons, and Harley feels increasingly more guilty the longer they dance around each other, flirting without a care for Peter's stilled mark. 

Harley never does figure who his own soulmate is.

The frozen compass is an unwanted reminded, black and stark against his skin. For all that he doesn’t care.

(He’d never admit it, not to anyone, least of all himself, but not knowing who that needle points to, who his Polaris star is, like his Momma always said—well, that hurts. Makes him feel a little anchorless in this big, daunting world, without his guiding light.

But Harley’s only ever been fiercely, desperately independent, and he knows the truth about soulmates. And he’d never admit it, not to anyone, least of all himself.)

* * *

The day it happens isn’t of any importance. Neither is the weather, nor the time. It’s just an ordinary day. Up until it isn’t.

Harley and Peter are hanging out in the lab, like usual, like they always are, and Harley opens his big fat mouth, and asks, “How come I’ve never met your soulmate?”

Peter just _looks_ at him like he’s missed a joke.

Maybe he has. They’ve grown so close over this last year, and Harley’s told Peter near about everything that’s happened to him, every thought—there’s just something about Peter that’s a comfort to Harley, and it’s not like he knows that isn’t reciprocated, not when Peter’s spent more nights curled up on Harley’s couch than in his own bed after a bad patrol, a tradition set in not long after their rooftop conversation. And yet, Peter’s never once said a word about his soulmate.

Peter doesn’t say anything, instead getting up and moving towards Harley.

Peter grabs his wrist, and shoves Harley’s sleeve up until the skin of his wrist is exposed, aligns his own wrist with Harley and it’s then, that Harley realises, that their compasses point with unerring certainty towards each other.

“Because it’s _you.”_ Peter says, a statement, a reckoning. 

The entire world spins on its axis, and stops. 

“How long have you known?” Harley asks, his voice strained, his eyes stuck on their wrists.

“Since the day we met.”

“When I met Spider-Man? Or Peter Parker?”

“Spider-Man.”

Harley’s breath stutters in his chest. That was nearly a whole _year_ ago.

“How?” Harley can’t tear his eyes away, even though he can feel Peter staring at him.

“When you reached out—” Peter cuts himself off, and takes a breath. “When you reached out, I saw the moment it stopped spinning.”

Harley feels faint. “It pointed straight at you. This whole time.”

“You’re Polaris to me, Harley,” Peter says, echoing their rooftop conversation like it doesn’t stab Harley right through the heart. “I know you don’t believe in soulmates but—you always have been.”

“No, I don’t believe in soulmates,” Harley agrees, his voice still a ruined and raw thing. “But I believe in you.”

_“Harley.”_

He doesn’t know how to describe the sound that Peter makes. Somewhere between a choked gasp and a sobbed laugh. But it’s not one he ever wants to hear ever again, because it’s _painful_ as much as it is inspiring. And then Peter’s throwing himself into Harley’s arms and it feels like coming _home._

Harley hides his face in Peter’s curls. Wonders how _stupid_ he’s been.

“You were so oblivious,” Peter says, the words muffled against Harley’s throat. “And then you told me about your parents and—”

“It’s okay, darlin’,” Harley cuts in, over the desperate sound that Peter makes. “I know, I know.”

He does—he _knows_ that Peter didn’t say anything, because Peter _would_ sacrifice his own happiness like that, if it meant letting Harley live free of the chains of being soulmates, simply because of a decision _Harley_ made. 

Because Peter is selfless, and Harley doesn’t know what he did to deserve _him_. As a friend, a confidant, let alone as his _soulmate._

He cups the back of Peter’s neck, grasping it gently, and draws Peter out from his place hidden amongst the curve of Harley’s shoulder. Shifts his hand from Peter’s neck to frame his face, thumb on the edge of his jaw.

“Peter,” he says, needs to say _his soulmate's_ name like he needs to breathe air. “Peter, sweetheart, I’m already in love with you.”

The second Harley says it, he knows it’s the truth. Knows it like he knows that Peter really is his true north, his Polaris, just like he’s Peter’s. Because this last year, of getting to know Peter? Of letting Peter _in?_ That’s been easier than anything, so much so that Harley should’ve seen this coming, should’ve figured it out.

There are tears in Peter’s eyes, dark brown and luminous. Harley presses their foreheads together, has to slide his own eyes shut just for a moment. He’s been such a _fool._

The thing is—It’s not like that haven’t been hurtling towards this point, like colliding stars, their compasses drawing them in like magnets. To think Harley had been _hesitant because Peter had already met his soulmate_ only for it to be _him._

“You mean it?” He hears Peter ask, and feels his heart break in two.

Harley looks Peter in the eye, knows he’s wearing his emotions all over his face. “Of course, I do, Peter, I love you—I thought---you’d already met your soulmate, I didn’t realise it was _me.”_

Peter laughs, wetly, but a smile breaks across his face like the sun. “You’re such an idiot, Keener.”

“Your idiot,” Harley replies, giving in to the urge to press a kiss to Peter’s cheek. “You’re stuck with me now.”

Instead of replying, Peter tilts his head and slides his lips against Harley’s, kissing him sweet and soft and it’s true, what they say, that the north star will guide you home.

**Author's Note:**

> a special shout out to [venom](https://archiveofourown.org/users/venomondenim) for sparking the idea for this fic, thank you for entertaining my ideas 🖤 and to [sheps](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheps) for being the best cheerleader while i was writing, you already know b 💙💫 
> 
> as always, hope you guys enjoyed! come find me on tumblr [@volantium](https://volantium.tumblr.com)


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